The residents on Argillite Way signed a petition to let the Lathrop City Council know that they want traffic calming measures implemented on their street to reduce the speed of vehicles.
But when it came time to produce it for the council to consider last week, they couldn’t find it – creating a unique situation where the matter, while technically not in compliance with the guidelines that govern such requests, was still brought before the council for its consideration and adoption.
And almost everybody was okay with the fact that the residents were going to re-sign a new petition so that the city could have it on hand and if council approved the request implement the speed humps to help enhance the safety of the neighborhood.
Everybody but Councilman Paul Akinjo.
Akinjo, who first asked Engineer Michael King if the city staff was “trying to set a precedent” by bringing something to the council without the required petition signed by residents, chided City Manager Steve Salvatore for the fact that the item was even on the agenda to begin with – telling him that “there are rules” when it pertains to things like this.
Salvatore informed the council that the reason that the item was placed on the agenda was because the body only meets once a month, and since it’s a matter of public safety, it wouldn’t have made sense to bring the item back a month later only to have to wait another month to get the speed humps installed – delaying an issue that residents have told the city they want dealt with as soon as possible.
“If we can find it tomorrow, of if the residents recreate it tomorrow, then we can move forward with the engineering to figure out what location works best on the street and we can have that put in,” Salvatore said. “In most cases, that’s before the next council meeting so we aren’t waiting a whole council meeting and then doing the work beyond that.
“This is merely to accommodate the traffic control on the road because we’re at one meeting a month.”
Lathrop requires at least 50 percent of the residents on a street requesting traffic calming measures to be in favor of the proposal before moving forward with the installation, and Salvatore noted that the city would hold off until the petition – either the original or the one that was recreated by residents – was in their hands before advancing the work.
Akinjo ultimately voted in favor of the consent calendar, which included the level three traffic calming measures.
Argillite Avenue, which is in the Stonebridge development near Joseph Widmer Elementary School, has already had level one traffic calming measures implemented, which proved unsatisfactory to residents. The exact placement of the speed humps would be dependent upon the engineering study done on the street itself, and the area that would be looked at will stretch from Pipestone and Galena Streets.
